Life

Seven-Time IRONMAN Launches First Annual Ride to Give

The Halstead family, with 2-year-old Tripp, who are on the receiving end of the Ride to Give.

After a heavy spring racing schedule, an IRONMAN Texas competitor will ride 900 miles to help an injured boy he's never met.

By Jennifer Ward Barber

After knocking out an IRONMAN this Saturday in Texas and a 70.3 on June 23 in Syracuse, Dave Nazaroff will hop back on his bike and ride to Jefferson, Georgia. If the 900-mile ride isn’t enough to keep what the Nyack, New York resident calls the "post-IRONMAN blues" at bay, what awaits him in Georgia certainly will.

Nazaroff is riding to raise money for a two-year-old boy he’s never met, and there could be thousands of supporters ready to greet him when he arrives in the boy’s hometown.

A heavy falling tree branch shattered Tripp Halstead’s skull while the toddler was playing outside at daycare last fall, leaving him with a traumatic brain injury. Since then he has undergone 13 surgeries, while battling bacteria, flu, and meningitis. Nazaroff’s wife learned about the Halstead family’s situation through Tripp’s mother Stacy’s Facebook page, where she would post about her son’s condition daily. (The page now has over 570,000 followers.)

As parents of two themselves (their son, George, is 2 and their daughter, Gertie, is 7), the Nazaroffs instantly connected to what the Halsteads were going through. Nazaroff’s wife, Kate, thought that if her husband could do seven IRONMANs in four years, why not a bike ride to Atlanta? She asked him over dinner, and Ride to Give was born—which Nazaroff hopes to repeat every year for a different family in need.

"I want to do it for kids. The little people need a bit of help," he says.

Having finished IRONMAN Lake Placid, Coeur d’Alene, St. George, New York City, Kona, and soon Texas, Nazaroff says he wanted to try something new and difficult. ("You’ve got to do something challenging if you want people to donate," he says.) He has raised almost 80,000 in just eight weeks, and will be collecting donations along the way.

"Fifty cents, a dollar, we’ll take anything," he says.

As the co-owner of two Toga Multisport bike shops in the area, as well as Gotham bikes in Tribeca, Nazaroff is doing the ride on his vacation time, planning to complete the straight-shot route in five days. (Togamultisport.com has the map of the ride.)

The money raised will be put toward helping Tripp’s mother stay by her son’s side during his recovery.

"I’m an IRONMAN and all, but that’s a one-day thing and you’re done," Nazaroff said. "This woman is at the hospital day and night, month after month. To me, that’s a true IRONMAN."